


Methods

by thehonestman (orphan_account)



Category: K-pop, SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Angst, Cheating, Established Relationship, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 06:51:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20738012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/thehonestman
Summary: Junhui’s pride beats with life, settles into the crevices of Minghao’s palm, then dies.





	Methods

As children, we learn empirically about what it means to be alive. Born with the kind of giddiness only recreated at very particular points in life, the excitement of simply observing, mimicking, assimilating, and understanding is an excitement that many have forgotten by the time they hit their teenage years. Minghao often wonders how he lived without that giddiness in the time period between his teenage years and his late twenties. 

That time period has a name, and its name is Wen Junhui.

Meeting Junhui had been interesting, a sort of internal experimentation project Minghao was running on himself to see if maybe this time, things would stick. Living with Junhui, however, is the revitalization of that unrefined, childish giddiness. 

Minghao learns empirically about what it means to live with Junhui. He makes a habit of watching Junhui often, learning his comings and goings, and the habits that others do not soak up. And by now, he has it down to a science: Junhui swings his arms exactly _ this _ high when he walks, Junhui ticks his head exactly _ this _ far to the left when he’s thinking, and Junhui waits exactly _ this _long to greet Minghao when he comes home.

The act of living with another person is, in itself, another thing that Minghao must learn, regardless of who it is. For a short while after they move to the city, Junhui and Minghao are just that: Junhui and Minghao. Lives so intertwined that Minghao never forgets how he feels so seen by Junhui, more seen than he’s ever felt by anyone else. Lamplights, television, radio static: Minghao shares things he’s never had to share before, things he never anticipated having to share. It’s a shared wardrobe. It’s a joint bank account. It’s a king-sized bed. It’s a whispered confession every day and every night. Most importantly, it’s one life: waking up and talking and eating and sleeping, all the most human actions that seem inhumane without the other.

In detail, critical detail, the apartment is small but the wrap-around porch is big, and the fence is white, and the house is grand and filled with life, and it is close enough to the city to be loyal to where they are now, but far enough to be back to what they used to be.

It’s at this point that Minghao wants to get married. Doesn’t particularly pursue it, just tosses the thought around in his mind, pictures what it might be like to have Junhui as a husband. There wouldn’t particularly be any difference, at least none significant enough to be thought of in such abstract terms. Maybe it would make him grow up faster. Junhui has a few years on him, but Minghao has always felt older. He would often tell Junhui that he just happened to be born before him.

But it’s at this point that Minghao wants to get married.

* * *

Sometimes, Minghao will whisper some words in Junhui’s ear when they’re in bed together. The words are specific, and they are brought to Junhui’s ear in a loving tone, but they do not register for long enough to deposit the exact weight that Minghao intends they carry. Words are weights, and when Minghao says them to him, the weight distributes unevenly, and the scales are just off enough for Junhui to lose his balance. This is temporary, though, because Junhui always has a way of rebalancing the scales after a short sabbatical. 

Mouth, ear, mouth, hands: “Pick it up,” Minghao whispers to him. “You’re slipping.”

From there, Junhui takes it harder, feels it deeper, makes it better. Junhui takes what he wants from those words, but in the following weeks, he will let Minghao know his actual, painfully nonerotic meaning had been clear. It’s a temporary matter. 

Words are weights, but at least Minghao is no more transparent than Junhui is. He sees him, knows him, knows he’s slipping when he comes home looking so pretty.

_Sloppy work_, Minghao thinks. _ Pick it up_.

* * *

There are always couples that, when thought of as individuals, make no sense. Maybe they once had, holding onto their past selves only in a whisper, under the covers. Lamplights. Television. Radio static. Thought of together, it works, but on their own, Junhui and Minghao make sense by the sole fact that they simply do not make sense. 

In truth, Junhui had never wanted this for their relationship. He’s not quite like Minghao, at least not anymore, and maybe that’s why it burns. If there is a word for the combination of truth and faith, Junhui is yet to find it, but that’s what he’d wanted for them. That’s what he still wants for them.

It couldn’t be, though. Because after a short while in real life, Junhui had been turned into a manicured city boy: free and vacant and shallow. What he likes is this: sleeping in late and dressing up for brunch on his own. Sunglasses. Afternoons in class and learning, empirically, the other people around him. White lies. Night clubs and heavy stares, stumbling in the street. Loud music.

Minghao sees glimpses of the old Junhui only at home. Minghao, who has maintained his rural roots, remembering family and honesty and home. And here’s what he likes: waking up early and watching the passers by out the window. Old books. Afternoons drinking tea after work and watching Junhui rush out the door. Hanging planters. Nights at home painting, shirtless and primal. Loud music. 

The fact remains: Minghao believes in love, and Junhui believes in bodies.

* * *

“This band sucks.” Minghao turns. “I’m sorry,” Junhui starts. “I thought you were someone else.”

“They all suck.” A pause. Hands in pockets, hands out. Then back in. “That’s the point.”

“That they’re bad?”

“That they’re _ sad_.” Junhui ponders this for a second. Cares about it.

“So you must come to these kinds of things often,” he says, directing Minghao’s lost attention back to him. But when he does, he suddenly loses the confidence he’d just found. Maybe Minghao has it in his pocket.

“Something like that.”

“Do you play?”

“I . . . yes. In a sense.” Junhui quirks a brow, says nothing. “I write music for my friend.”

“Oh. I didn’t mean to insult them.”

“These aren’t my friends. Don’t stick around.” Junhui feels confused, but turns back to his own friends, the people he’d thought he was talking to originally. He shuffles to the side of the small stage when a mosh pit starts to form in the crowd: inappropriate in such a small space. He watches, judges, calculates how embarrassing it would be to be like them, and wonders if the boy he’d just been talking to would be in there. He searches for him, then drags his eyes to the other side of the stage to find the boy standing there, smiling wildly at him. 

Junhui is scared of the boy, at first. His hair is too long, his earrings are too big, and his smile is too familiar. He gives the boy a look that asks so many questions, but he just throws his head back and laughs. And not for the first time in his short life, Junhui feels completely inferior, and utterly, utterly seen.

The band on stage ends, and the group in the mosh pit, undoubtedly entirely composed of the band’s friends, disperses to make way for movement. Unsurprisingly, the boy makes his way over to Junhui.

“Don’t stick around,” he says again. “They’re coming on now.”

And the next group is on, and their songs have a melancholy that Junhui has never known, and he realizes that the boy is just as insecure as him. Or maybe he’s cocky, pushing some kind of reverse psychology to make sure Junhui had stayed. Either way, it had worked, and Junhui looks at him quite differently.

“They suck.” The boy laughs.

“Xu Minghao,” he says.

“Wen Junhui,” he says. A pause.

“Do you like wine?”

* * *

There are innumerable ways in which people can cross paths. From work to home to the store to a movie to a bar, the possibilities are endless: endless opportunities to run into the exact right person, or the exact wrong one. In this case, Minghao wonders if never having crossed paths with this person would have served them better. 

“You guys are a sweet couple,” someone says, and Minghao feels regret. Maybe then, they wouldn’t be faced with the outside. It had never occurred to them that others see them that way. They exist in their own bubble, _ JunhuiAndMinghao_, not even broken by the others that Junhui gives himself to because they’re never in their home. It had never occurred to them that others could see them at all.

“Well,” Junhui says. But that’s all. 

To trace back an entire relationship to the point they’d crossed paths is impossible considering: inside and outside.

There is an inside and an outside to this relationship, and suddenly they know how not to mix them.

* * *

Looking back now, Minghao also wonders if he should have gone about it in a different way. There is a difference between _ method _ and _ methodology,_ and Minghao knows his methodology is sound.

Fact 1: It’s two o’clock in the morning, and Minghao is alive. Ideally, the room would have large windows, more natural light, but the theater lights will have to do. It feels more like a museum exhibit than a spare bedroom turned studio: all white walls and wood floor. Empty. Minghao’s head is empty, completely surrendered to the music that infests his brain, floats in and out of his ears like smoke. In a moment of intense emotion, his hand flicks, his arm flies, he throws paint around the canvas with no character. Somewhere between deliberate and random, his art is automatic, impossible had he thought about it beforehand. There is no thought. There is only art.

Fact 2: Junhui comes home when he said he wouldn’t. Junhui never says when he will be home, just says when he won’t: _I won’t be home until three _ instead of _ I’ll be home at three_. Funny how that sort of thing makes such a difference. Silent upon his entrance, Minghao is able to read him as soon as he steps in the room with a certain look. Unadulterated sadness. The dangerous kind of sadness, too, because it hangs in his eyes as opposed to on his face. 

Fact 3: The timer has run out.

Minghao assesses these facts of the decision point in order to ensure that his methodology is sound, and that whatever method he chooses he needs to be able to talk to Junhui in a way he will understand, and that they will get through this unscathed.

Methodology only takes a person so far: the sweet spot between his quantity and Junhui’s quality coincides with the soft spot between truth and faith that Junhui still searches for. He digs his hand into Junhui’s vulnerability, and pulls out his pride: holds it in his hand like he’s just reached into a live body and pulled out a bloody heart. Junhui’s pride beats with life, settles into the crevices of Minghao’s palm, then dies. And Minghao is there to watch it. It feels good because it is clear that Junhui really feels it. His method, though, still seems mean.

But Fact 4: Junhui deserves it. For much longer than Minghao had been speaking, Junhui had been out there, and he had let Minghao live in the image of it.

Minghao opens his palm and shows Junhui his pride, and it no longer looks like a bleeding heart. It has taken on the shape of a fetus, ripped from the womb. It has eyes and nerve endings and a heartbeat of its own now, and it looks alien, and Junhui can’t look. But Minghao holds his eyes open and doesn’t say anything about the obtainment procedure, just makes him look at it. Makes him feel it. Porch. House. Life. 

He addresses it without addressing it. No, the method is sound.

* * *

Now and again, there are rules. In the traditional sense, energy shared between them has no boundaries, bordered and buffered only when Minghao tells Junhui that he’s slipping. 

Before he does that, Minghao wonders if he should have seen it coming. _ Freedom _ is a word that means the power to act without hindrance or restraint. Going around at night, giving himself to everyone, Junhui is far too reckless and free to ever truly be with Minghao. Because that’s exactly what Junhui is: free, in every sense of the word.

Knees, hands, pavement, sweat: Junhui trips himself, tricks himself, pulls it together when he knows Minghao is looking. It’s all unintentional, it’s very fun; he has no way of stopping a ride he never got on in the first place. And Minghao thinks he should have known. Junhui never stays still long enough to hear the sound of his own voice, how would he have been able to stay with him long enough to get married? Wrap-around porch. Big house. Life. None of it makes sense in complete freedom. Minghao sees himself there, sees Junhui, sees the house, adds the freedom and subtracts the past, and the math does not make sense.

There is a difference between qualitative and quantitative data. Junhui is entirely qualitative, not meant to be hindered or restrained by numbers. Minghao looks at the words, and ignores the numbers.

Lesson learned: for Minghao, a life without Junhui is not a life worth living.

* * *

Minghao works early and Junhui has late classes, and for a short while in the city, they fall into routine. _ Wake, work, study, sleep, _ all together. All together now, as every second in between their outside is the inside. Timeless, _ let’s keep this up forever. _

“Are you happy here?”

“Never been happier.”

The timer only starts when they make a mutual discovery: Wen Junhui is too excitable. Minghao can hold back, can take himself out of the places he no longer belongs, and prides himself on that fact. Shaped by years of heavy restriction from his own personal freedoms, Minghao is consumed.

But Junhui is a consumer. Junhui cannot hold back, far too susceptible to the temptations of the outside world. It’s not out of weakness, like Minghao might think, rather out of the conscious, unfair and individual decision that a life with a wrap-around porch is not a life for him.

Sometimes, the timer stills, and other times, it runs out quickly, one minute for every second, one hour for every minute. Peace, please. _ Let’s keep this up forever_. But if there is no peace, then there is only routine, because that’s as close as it gets. Junhui is vulnerable, and Minghao wants him to himself.

Some relationships are timeless. Others are not.

* * *

If Junhui is not slipping, he is drifting, but Minghao doesn’t whisper that in his ear in bed. Because that’s something they both know now. Slipping is something only Minghao can see, but drifting is the independent variable; it exists in and of itself, and the _ JunhuiAndMinghao _ confirms its reality, gives birth to its form.

So in an ugly kind of way, Minghao does know that Junhui does not belong to him because Junhui does not truly belong to anyone. He is a ghost, an enigma, he drifts, soul to soul, body to body, but tells Minghao he’s the one. He is the one, really. The one he stays with, lives with, shares with. But not The One, because The One does not exist for Junhui.

Junhui was once achievable, and on the mental checklist that Minghao keeps, the check mark next to _ Wen Junhui _ has been erased and rewritten several times. _ Junhui tells me I'm the one:_ check. _ Junhui starts slipping again_: erase. And so it goes. Junhui is the white whale that Minghao chases fruitlessly, forever. But he does it in inaction, and maybe that’s where it all went wrong. If that’s the case, he’ll never know, because he kicks this off by admitting his defeat, confirms what he knows, but strategically leaves out the fact that he may know nothing at all.

So he must live in the knowledge that there is no knowledge.

* * *

“You’ve never been good at keeping things from me,” is Minghao’s way of letting Junhui know he understands.

“Do you think I’m a bad person?” Junhui looks at Minghao with the same fear he saw in his eyes at that concert, the first time they’d met. And Minghao looks back at him in his chair as he shuffles, and realizes suddenly that he looks so small, like a child being scolded, and now this hardly seems appropriate. Minghao suddenly feels embarrassed of him.

“I just think you have some growing up to do.”

“I’m older than you.”

“You were just born before me.”

“Oh.” Minghao smiles.

In their life, their singular life, Minghao has only once admitted his defeat, and this is it. He kicks it off here, and Junhui does not get it. Because as much as Minghao does not think that Junhui is a bad person, he does think that Junhui is dumb. Just in the dull, naive sense as if he’d never grown out of that giddy, childish stage of empiric learning, and _ oh_.

Oh.

* * *

For his own sanity, Minghao looks back at very few points in his life.

Example 1: _ I am already in a relationship, but this stranger looks good with a bottle of wine in his hand. _

Example 2: _ I don’t remember why I moved away from home. _

Example 3: _ I must have caused this, somehow_.

The truth is that Minghao still can’t figure out how, exactly, he caused this. He didn’t. He’s still wondering how he missed it for so long, but in a way he always knew. Never saw or heard anything, but just kind of got the feeling. 

That’s the benefit of being _ JunhuiAndMinghao_. Things don’t happen. Things are just felt. 

But with every whispered “you’re slipping,” there is a silent kind of rage behind his words that means he knows. Whenever Junhui comes home looking so pretty, Minghao knows and does nothing about it. If his own past miscalculations have had any bearing on the situation he’s in now, the connection is not clear. Corkboard, pushpins, red yarn. The image in between is one of Junhui outside their house on the sidewalk, a deer in the headlights, and right next to it is one of Minghao’s friends on stage. _ My friend_, Minghao had called him. It was more than that, Junhui had been told later, and maybe that’s why he’s punishing him like this. But the method is sound, because Junhui lets it string on longer.

The image is this: Junhui on that floor, swinging neck to neck, hands to chest, and Minghao throws more paint at the wall and wonders scornfully how he missed it. The connection between Minghao’s slipping and Junhui’s slipping is not within Minghao’s grasp.

And so it goes.

* * *

“Do you remember,” he says, “when we first moved in here?” Junhui pushes his tea cup from hand to hand. He can’t speak, just looks at him curiously. “Do you remember talking about the big house for the future?”

“Yes.” Junhui is crying. _ Oh. _

“We planned everything, Jun. _ Everything_.” Junhui puts his hand on his own chest, like he’s looking for his pride. Minghao is about to show it to him, and it looks rotten. “We said the walls would be navy blue and gray, and we’d have a brown tile backsplash in the kitchen.” Minghao closes his eyes, Junhui watches him. “Our bedroom would have dark gray walls too, and the en-suite would have a separate bathtub and shower.” He stops for a second, and opens his eyes. “Do you remember that?” Junhui cries again.

“Yes.”

“What else?” Minghao asks, and Junhui shakes his head. “We have . . . two kids,” he continues, and Junhui grimaces, scrunches up his face like he’s in pain. That had always been the hardest part, for him. Layers upon layers of plans that he once wanted to carry out. “You’re the fun parent, and I’m the strict one.” Now Junhui opens his eyes, and they are dry, cleared of all tears.

“I’m sorry, Hao,” he says, and he means it.

“We didn’t get to talk about the porch.”

“I can’t.”

“I can.” Junhui grimaces again. _ Method. Methodology. _ “A big, wrap-around porch, and we’ll sit on it and we’ll people-watch in the mornings and then sit out there all night.” He laughs. “Speakers outside, plants on the windowsill. Sounds so nice, right Jun?”

“Okay.”

“We’re not going to have any of that, Junhui.”

“I’m _ sorry_.”

“It’s okay.” Minghao places a hand on Junhui’s. It’s covered in blood. Then he pulls it back. “I just think,” he pauses and restarts, looks out the window, then back to Junhui’s eyes. “You can’t fake it that far.”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Junhui says, and for a second, Minghao is worried Junhui will say he’s going to stop and stay with Minghao, because if he says that, Minghao won’t be able to say no. But he doesn’t say it, just apologizes for how long they’d been together and how it was a waste of time because he’s not cut out for a life like this. 

Minghao sits on that thought and wonders if any of it was real. He realizes that it was, but it was just temporary, because apparently, those two are not mutually exclusive. Minghao smiles.

“You’ve never really been down here on earth with me, have you?” And Junhui cries once again, not because their life has finally caught up with him, but because Minghao handles it in ways that he could never. 

“Do you regret moving to the city?”

“No, because this has nothing to do with the city. This has to do with you.”

A silence.

“Wen Junhui,” Minghao says, for no reason other than just being able to say it one last time, the way children ask for five more minutes at the park, not having empirically learned enough about the world just yet.

* * *

Minghao recalls a book he read once. On paper, it’s about moving to a new place and the thrills that come with it. Between the lines, it’s about constantly wishing, wanting for something that you simply cannot have, and doing nothing about it either way. And he thinks about himself and Junhui playing out the ending of that book.

_ “Oh, Minghao,” _ Junhui would say, _ “we could have had such a damned good time together.” _

_ “Yes,” _ Minghao would say, _ “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” _


End file.
